Skeptical Briefs - Committee for Skeptical Inquiryhttp://www.csicop.org/
enCopyright 20162016-12-05T14:37:08+00:00A Skeptical Look at September 11thSun, 01 Sep 2002 16:22:00 EDTinfo@csicop.org ()http://www.csicop.org/si/show/skeptical_look_at_september_11th
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/skeptical_look_at_september_11thAt the one-year anniversary, we examine reactions to the September 11, 2001, attacks in the context of other causes of premature deaths. An objective of terrorism is to multiply damage by inducing irrational fears in the broad population. One defense is to learn to evaluate such situations more objectively.

Human beings might be expected to value each life, and each death, equally. We each face numerous hazards-war, disease, homicide, accidents, natural disasters-before succumbing to “natural” death. Some premature deaths shock us far more than others. Contrasting with the 2,800 fatalities in the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001 (9/11), we barely remember the 20,000 Indian earthquake victims earlier in 2001. Here, we argue that the disproportionate reaction to 9/11 was as damaging as the direct destruction of lives and property. Americans can mitigate future terrorism by learning to respond more objectively to future malicious acts. We do not question the visceral fears and responsible precautions taken during the hours and days following 9/11, when there might have been even worse attacks. But, as the first anniversary of 9/11 approaches, our nation’s priorities remain radically torqued toward homeland defense and fighting terrorism at the expense of objectively greater societal needs. As we obsessively and excessively beef up internal security and try to dismantle terrorist groups worldwide, Americans actually feed the terrorists’ purposes.

Every month, including September 2001, the U.S. highway death toll exceeds fatalities in the WTC, Pentagon, and four downed airliners combined. Just like the New York City firefighters and restaurant workers, last September’s auto crash victims each had families, friends, critical job responsibilities, and valued positions in their churches and communities. Their surviving children, also, were left without one parent, with shattered lives, and much poorer than the 9/11 victims’ families, who were showered with 1.5 million dollars, per fatality, from the federal government alone. The 9/11 victims died from malicious terrorism, arguably compounded by poor intelligence, sloppy airport security, and other failed procedures we imagined were protecting us. While few of September’s auto deaths resulted from malice, neither were they “natural” deaths: most also resulted from individual, corporate, and societal choices about road safety engineering, enforcement of driving-while-drunk laws, safe car design, and so on.

A Lack of Balance

Why does 9/11 remain our focus rather than the equally vast carnage on the nation’s highways or Indian earthquake victims? Some say, “Oh, it was a natural disaster and nothing could be done, while 9/11 was a malicious attack.” Yet better housing in India could have saved thousands. As for malice, where is our concern for the 15,000 Americans who die annually by homicide? Apparently, the death toll doesn't matter, not if people die all at once, not even if they die by malicious intent. We focus on 9/11, of course, because these attacks were terroristic and were indelibly imprinted on our consciousness by round-the-clock news coverage. Our apprehension was then amplified when just a half dozen people died by anthrax. Citizens apparently support the nation’s sudden, massive shift in priorities since 9/11. Here, we ask “Why?”

Suppose we had reacted to 9/11 as we did to last September’s auto deaths. That wouldn't have lessened the destroyed property, lost lives and livelihoods, and personal bereavement of family and associates of the WTC victims. But no billions would have been needed to prop up airlines. Local charities wouldn't have suffered as donations were redirected to New York City. Congress might have enacted prescription drug benefits, as it was poised to do before 9/11. Battalions of National Guardsmen needn't have left their jobs to provide a visible “presence” in airports. The nation might not have slipped into recession, with resulting losses to businesses, workers, and consumers alike. And the FBI might still be focusing on rampant white-collar crime (think Enron) rather than on terrorism. While some modest measures (e.g., strengthening cockpit doors) were easy to implement, may have inhibited some “copycat” crimes, and may even lessen future terrorism, we believe that much of the expensive effort is ineffective, too costly to sustain, or wholly irrelevant.

Some leaders got it right when they implored Americans after 9/11 to return to their daily routines, for otherwise “the terrorists will win.” Unfortunately, such exhortations seemed aimed at rescuing the travel industry rather than articulating a broad vision of how to respond to terrorism. We advocate that most of us more fully “return to normal life.” We suggest that the economic and emotional damage unleashed by 9/11, which touched the lives of all Americans, resulted mostly from our own reactions to 9/11 and the anthrax scare, rather than from the objective damage. We recognize that our assertion may seem inappropriate to some readers, and we are under no illusion that natural human reactions to the televised terrorism could have been wholly averted and redirected. We, too, gaped in horror at images of crashing airplanes and we contributed to WTC victims. But from within the skeptical community there could emerge a more objective, rational alternative to post-9/11. Citizens could learn to react more constructively to future terrorism and to balance the terrorist threat against other national priorities. It could be as important to combat our emotional vulnerability to terrorism as to attack Al Qaeda.

Terrorism, by design, evokes disproportionate responses to antisocial acts by a malicious few. By minimizing our negative reactions, we might contribute to undermining terrorists’ goals as effectively as by waging war on them or by mounting homeland defenses. We do not “blame the victims” for the terrorists’ actions. Rather, we seek that we citizens, the future targets of terrorism, be empowered. As Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” We can help ensure that terrorists don't win if we can minimize our fears and react more constructively to future terrorism. We don't suggest that this option is easy or will suffice alone. It may not even be possible. But human beings often best succeed by being rational when their emotions, however tenacious and innate, have let them down.

Death and Statistics

It is a maxim that one needless or untimely death is one too many. So 20,000 victims should be 20,000 times worse. But our minds don't work that way. Given the national outpouring of grief triggered by the estimated 6,500 WTC deaths, one might have expected celebration in late October when it was realized that fewer than half that many had died. But there were no headlines like “3,000 WTC Victims Are Alive After All!” The good news was virtually ignored. Weeks later, many - including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - continued to speak of “over 5,000 deaths” on 9/11.

To researchers in risk perception, this is natural human behavior. We are evolved from primitive nomads and cave dwellers who never knew, personally, more than the few hundred people in their locales. Until just a few generations ago, news from other lands arrived sporadically via sailors; most people lived and died within a few miles of where they were born. Tragedies invariably concerned a known, nearby person. With the globalization of communication, the world-not just our local valley-has entered our consciousness. But our brains haven't evolved to relate, personally, to each of 6 billion people. Only when the media singles out someone-perhaps an “average layperson” or maybe a tragic exception like JonBenet Ramsey-do our hearts and minds connect.

When an airliner crashes, and reporters focus on a despairing victims’ spouse or on the last cellular phone words of a doomed traveler, our brains don't think statistically. We imagine ourselves in that airplane seat, or driving to the airport counseling center when our loved one’s plane is reported missing. Actually, 30,000 U.S. commercial flights occur each day. In 2001, except for September 11th and November 12th (when an airliner crashed in Queens, New York, killing more passengers and crew than in the four 9/11 crashes combined), no scheduled, U.S. commercial air trips resulted in a single passenger fatality. Indeed, worldwide airline accidents in 2001-including 9/11-killed fewer passengers than during an average year. But statistics can't compete with images of emergency workers combing a crash site for body parts with red lights flashing. We are gripped by fear as though the tragedy happened in our own neighborhood, and another might soon happen again.

Some responses to 9/11 were rational. Soon after jumbo jets were used as flying bombs, workers in landmark skyscrapers might reasonably have feared that their building could be next. With radical Muslims preaching that Americans must be killed, it might behoove us to avoid conspicuous or symbolic gatherings like Times Square on New Year’s Eve or the Super Bowl. Surely disaster managers must plug security loopholes that could permit thousands or millions more to be killed. But when police chiefs of countless middle American communities beef up security for their anonymous buildings, and search fans entering hundreds of sports fields to watch games of little note, official reactions to terrorism have run amok. To imagine that Al Qaeda’s next target might be the stadium in, say, Ames, Iowa, is far-fetched indeed.

Finite Resources, Infinite Alarm

Americans’ WTC fears only grew when six people died from mailed anthrax. Postal officials patiently explained that public risks were minimal. But millions donned gloves to open their mail or gingerly threw out unopened mail; post offices rejected letters lacking return addresses; urgent mail was embargoed; and for weeks the national dialog centered on one of the least hazards we face. An NPR radio host asked the Postmaster General if the whole U.S. Postal System might be shut down, despite expert opinion that-in a world faced with diabetes, salmonella poisoning, and AIDS-anthrax will remain (even as a biological weapon) a bit player as a cause of death. Its sole potency is in the context of terrorism: if, by mailing lethal powder to someone, the news media choose to broadcast hysteria into every home so that the very future of our postal system is questioned, then the terrorist has deployed a powerful weapon indeed. But his power would be negated if we were to react to the anthrax in proportion to its modest potential for harm.

Research on risk perception has shown that our reactions to hazards don't match the numerical odds. We fear events (like airliner crashes) that kill many at once much more than those that kill one at a time (car accidents). We fear being harmed unknowingly (by carcinogens) far more than by things we feel we control ourselves (driving or smoking). We fear unfamiliar technologies (nuclear power) and terrorism far more than prosaic hazards (household falls). Such disproportionate attitudes shape our actions as public citizens. Accordingly governments spend vastly more per life saved to mitigate highly feared hazards (e.g., on aircraft safety) than on “everyday” risks (e.g., food poisoning). Risk analysts commonly accept, with neutral objectivity, the disparity between lay perceptions and expert risk statistics. Sometimes it is justifiable to go beyond raw statistics. Depending on our values, we might be more concerned about unfair deaths beyond an individual’s control than self-inflicted harm. We might worry more about deaths of children than of elderly people with limited life expectancies. We might dread lingering, painful deaths more than sudden ones. We might be more troubled about “needless” deaths, with no compensating offsets, than about fatalities in the name of a larger good (e.g., of soldiers or police). Or, in all these cases, we might not.

Why should terrorism command our exceptional attention? That the 9/11 terrorists maliciously attacked the symbolic and actual seats of our economic and military power (WTC/Wall Street and the Pentagon) should concern us if we truly think that future attacks might destroy our society. But who believes that? Government responses seem directed mostly at stopping future similar attacks . . . which returns us full circle to the question: why should that have become our primary national goal, at the sacrifice of tens of billions of dollars, of some of our civil liberties, of our travelling convenience, and of many of our pre-9/11 priorities?

Instead of rationally apportioning funds to the worst or most unfair societal predicaments, homeland security budgets soar. Nearly every airport administrator, city emergency management director, mayor, legislator, school district supervisor, tourist attraction manager, and plant operations foreman felt compelled after 9/11 to “cover their asses” by visibly enhancing their facility’s security. Superfluous barricades were erected, search equipment purchased, and guards hired. Postage rates and delivery delays increase as envelopes are searched for anthrax. Even the governor of West Virginia announced a “West Virginia Watch” program; while some vigilance in that state does no harm, it is unlikely that Wheeling is high on Osama bin Laden’s target list.

Meanwhile, programs unrelated to “homeland security” suffer. Finite medical resources were diverted to comforting people that their flu symptoms weren't anthrax . . . or testing to see if they were. Charitable funds that would have nurtured the homeless flowed, instead, to wealthy families of deceased Wall Street traders. Funds for education and pollution control go instead to “securing” public buildings and events. Billions of extra tax dollars are spent on military operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan rather than on enhancing American productivity. If we truly believe in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and that each life is precious, we must resist selfish forces that would take advantage of our fears and squander our energies and fiscal resources on overblown security enhancements.

Many say that spending for extra security can do no harm. But there is harm when politicians act on views, like those of a New Yorker who earlier this year disparaged complaints about airport queues, saying, “I hope that they will be inconvenienced, and will always be inconvenienced, because we should never forget the 5,000 [sic] who died.” “Inconvenience” sounds innocuous, but it means lost time, lost money, lost productivity, as well as increased frustration and cynicism. Disproportionate expenditures on marginal security efforts take attention, time, and resources away from other more productive enterprises. Moreover, our civil liberties are eroded by the involuntary nature of our “sacrifices.” When a person irrationally fears crowded elevators and takes the stairs instead, only that person suffers the inconvenience of their personal response. But when everyone, fearful or not, is forced to suffer because of the fears of others, then such measures become tyrannical: we should expect rational deliberation and justifications by our leaders before accepting them. But in the aftermath of 9/11, tens of billions of dollars were immediately reallocated with little public debate. Skeptics might well question our society’s acquiescence to popular hysteria and proactively challenge our leaders to balance the expenditures of our resources.

Misperceptions of Risk

Consider some misperceptions of risk. Many news headlines just before 9/11 concerned shark attacks and the disappearance of Chandra Levy, an extreme distortion of serious societal issues (only ten people annually are killed by sharks worldwide). We can laugh at, or bemoan, the triviality of the media. But such stories reflect our own illogical concerns. If, in allocating funds among different hazards, we deliberately choose to value the lives of Manhattan skyscraper office workers, postal employees, or airline frequent flyers more than we value the lives of agricultural workers or miners, it is a conscious, informed choice. But it is rarely objectivity that informs such choices. In order to help laypeople and leaders to put our options into perspective, skeptics, teachers, and journalists alike have a responsibility to put the objective past and potential threats from terrorism into contexts that ordinary people can relate to.

Let’s compare 9/11 with other past and potential causes of mass death. Note that we generally can't compare prevention costs with lives saved; at best, we can compare expenditures with lives not saved. For example, we can compare the cost of air traffic control with midair collision fatalities, but we can only guess at the toll without any such air traffic control.

9/11 deaths are similar to monthly U.S. traffic fatalities. Whatever total private/public funds are spent annually, per life saved, on improved highway and motor vehicle safety, alcohol-while-driving prevention efforts, etc., it hardly approaches homeland security budgets.

The 9/11 fatalities were several to ten times fewer than annual deaths from falls (in the home or workplace), or from suicide, or from homicide. One can question the effectiveness of specific safety programs, counseling efforts, or laws; but, clearly, comparatively paltry sums are spent on programs that would further reduce falls, suicides, and murders.

In autumn 2001, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) predicted that 20,000 Americans would die from complications of influenza during the then-upcoming winter, most of which could be prevented if susceptible people were vaccinated. The CDC advisory was typically buried inside newspapers whose banner headlines dealt with the anthrax attacks, which killed just a few people.

Twice as many people died in the worst U.S. flood (stemming from the 1900 Galveston hurricane) as at the WTC. Floods and earthquakes are major killers abroad (each of ten disasters killed over 10,000 people, and a few over 100,000, during the last three decades, chiefly in Asia) but are minor killers in modern America. Hurricane Andrew did great physical damage even though fatalities were few. What are sensible expenditures for research in meteorology and seismology, for mandatory enhancement of building codes and redevelopment, and for other measures that would mitigate natural disasters?

The 9/11 fatalities are just 1.5 percent of those in the nation’s worst epidemic (half a million died from flu in 1918), and also just 1.5 percent of the annual U.S. cancer fatalities. We have waged a “war” on cancer, at the expense of research on other less feared but deadly diseases; this war’s success is equivocal (five-year survivability after detection is up, but so are cancer death rates-though mainly due to decades-old changes in smoking habits). Where should “homeland security” expenditures rank against medical expenditures?

Impacts by kilometer-sized asteroids are extremely rare, but one could send civilization into a new Dark Ages. The annualized American fatality rate is about 5 percent of the WTC fatalities, although such a cosmic impact has only 1/100th of 1 percent chance of happening during the twenty-first century. Just a couple million dollars are now spent annually to search for threatening asteroids. Should we spend many billions to build a planetary defense shield, which would statistically be in proportion to what we now spend on homeland security and the war on terrorism? Might the threat to our civilization’s very existence raise the stakes above even the terrorist threat?

To us, these comparisons suggest that the nation’s post-9/11 expenditures have been lopsidedly large, and that a balanced approach would “give back” some funds to reduce deaths from falls, suicide, murder, highway accidents, natural disasters (including even asteroid impacts), malnutrition, and preventable or curable diseases . . . and give back our civil liberties, and just the plain pleasures of life, such as the arts and humanities, exploration, and national parks. And if truly effective means to end wars could be found, they would be especially worthy of funds, given the death toll from twentieth century wars. Before homeland security becomes dominated by vested bureaucracies and constituencies, there may yet be time to question its dominant role in our priorities.

We advocate shifting toward objective cost-benefit analyses and equitable evaluation of the relative costs of saving human lives. Of course, subjective judgements have some validity beyond strict adherence to numerical odds. But we need a national dialog to address these issues dispassionately so that future governmental decisions can eschew immediate, impulsive reactions. Individual skeptics, in our own lives, can exemplify sensible choices. Among the many dumb things we should avoid (e.g., smoking, driving without a seatbelt, or letting kids play with firearms), we must also avoid driving instead of flying, acquiescing uncomplainingly to ineffective searches at local buildings and events, and generally yielding to the new “homeland security” mania. Clear thinking about risks, rather than saying that “any improvement in security is worth it,” can reduce our societal vulnerability to terrorism.

One constructive antidote to post-9/11 trauma is to enhance the information available and to foster sound appreciation, evaluation, and use of the information. Life is inherently risky, unpredictable, and subject to things we cannot know...but there are things we do know and can understand. Rather than scaring people about sharks, serial killers, and anthrax, the mass media could help people understand the real risks in their everyday environments and activities. Educational institutions should help students develop critical skills necessary to make rational choices. While avoiding intrusions into personal liberties, government could nevertheless collect and assess statistical data in those arenas (like air travel) where potential dangers lurk, concentrating protective efforts and law enforcement where it is most efficacious.

To conclude, we suggest that most homeland security expenditures, which in the zero-sum budget game are diverted from other vital purposes, are terribly expensive and disproportionate to competing needs for preventing other causes of death and misery in our society. While prudent, focused improvements in security are called for, the sheer costs of most security initiatives greatly distort the way we address the many threats to our individual and collective well-being. Our greatest vulnerability to terrorism is the persisting, irrational fear of terrorism that has gripped our country. We must start behaving like the informed, reasoning beings we profess to be.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to many friends and colleagues, especially David Morrison, for comments and criticisms that helped us to frame these issues.

]]>Why Was The X-Files So Appealing?Sun, 01 Sep 2002 16:22:00 EDTinfo@csicop.org ()http://www.csicop.org/si/show/why_was_the_x-files_so_appealing
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/why_was_the_x-files_so_appealingThe success of The X-Files was in large part due to its expression of a confluence of three powerful, ancient, and legend-like beliefs-paranormalism, conspiratorial thinking, and populism.

The demise of The X-Files series cries out for an assessment of its appeal. In the volatile world of big-time television, a decade-long run is no small potatoes. Clearly, the show said something to audiences that most programs don't. What was The X-Files' special magic? What made it intriguing to tens of millions of viewers?

My sense is that the program’s appeal was confluence of two immensely attractive and primordial ideas: paranormalism and conspiratorial thinking-along with a strain of populism, which often comes with paranormalism, and nearly always accompanies conspiracy theories.

The X-Files was not a documentary, of course—it was fiction. (At the same time, or so the show’s producers claimed, it was “inspired” by “documented accounts.”) It didn't lecture to us a paranormalist or a conspiratorial (or a populist) point of view. In fact, my guess is, its creators and producers adopted a tongue-in-cheek attitude toward the occult events it depicted. For most of us, the events it depicted were just a bit too fantastical to be taken seriously as fact. [See also ”The X-Files Meets the Skeptics,” Skeptical Inquirer, January/February 1997.]

But the program did contrast a paranormal/conspiracy point of view (Agent Mulder’s) with a more scientific or skeptical perspective (Agent Scully’s)-and week after week, the skeptical perspective always lost. Moreover, viewers actually saw evidence of both paranormalism and conspiracies at work with their own eyes. We saw the aliens scuttling about in the shadows and we saw the Cigarette-Smoking Man and his cronies, also in shadowy places, conspiring to cover up evidence that the aliens are on our planet.

Spotting The X-Files' paranormal theme is a no-brainer. Not only were the words “paranormal activity” flashed on the screen in the program’s opening credits, but throughout, Mulder’s supernatural theories were always verified. When Scully told him that that the presence of aliens on Earth contradicts the laws of physics, Mulder replied, when it comes to aliens, “the laws of physics rarely apply.” At another point, Scully, who is trained as a doctor, said: “I've always held science as sacred. I've always put my trust in accepted facts.” Mulder had a different take on the matter: “Might we not,” he asked, “turn to the fantastic as a possibility?” Week after week, the show overturned Scully’s trust and validated Mulder’s “possibility.” No doubt about it: In The X-Files, traditional science was thrown out the window and paranormalism reigned supreme.

The X-Files was also a classic case of a conspiracy narrative. Conspiracy theories argue the following. First, treachery is afoot; somebody (or something) is trying to do harm. Second, not only do the conspirators want to do harm to others, they want to do harm to us- good, decent people. Third, the conspirators are organized; indeed, that’s what conspiracies are all about. Fourth, their actions are secret and clandestine; the conspirators are very good at covering their tracks. And fifth, they are powerful; in fact, all conspiracy theories are centrally about the distribution of power, about monopolizing and withholding it (Fenster 1999).

Conspiracy theories are nearly always populist theories as well: They support and trust the common man and woman, especially, first, their view of things, and second, their right to power. Conspiracy theories and populism share a strong distrust of the elite, people in high places, the rich, the powerful, the well-connected-including scientists and other well-educated, pompous pundits. And, crucial for our understanding of The X-Files, most varieties of populism see science as symbolizing or representing elitism-that is, as contrary to the views and the interests of the common man and woman. Science is complicated and difficult to learn and superficially it seems to be monopolized by, and to support the interest of, the powers that be. Turning the tables on what most scientists think, the populist strain of conspiracy theories sees science as traditional rather than revolutionary, conventional rather than going against the grain.

In conspiracy theories, the conspirators control public life by controlling access to valuable information. To fight against a conspiracy, we must first believe in it. And the central idea of conspiracy theories is that we must uncover the truth, which is what The X-Files is all about. As usual, Mulder said it best: “The answers are there. You just have to know where to look.” In principle, by telling the truth, we can undermine the control that the powerful have over us. One of the things that makes The X-Files interesting is its ironic twist on this age-old theme. More on this momentarily.

There are many varieties of conspiracy theories. One major type is the paranormal conspiracy theory. What paranormal conspiracy theories share with conspiracy theories in general is the view that nothing is as it seems. There are evil, shadowy figures who hide valuable information from the public. In The X-Files, the conspirators constituted a multinational “consortium” that “represents certain global interests,” which kept the truth from the rest of us. It was a conspiracy so vast that even the FBI was kind of a pawn, a puppet, a middleman between these powerful forces and the public. The valuable information in this case was of a paranormal nature-that extraterrestrials are here, they are here as a result of violating the laws of physics, and they mean to do harm to us by colonizing our bodies.

In the paranormal conspiracy theory, the underdog tries to reveal the truth about scientifically unexplainable phenomena and undermine, and ultimately defeat, the dominant, establishment view, thereby empowering the public. The underdog is opposed to a “rigid scientific view of the world.” In place of this rigid view, the anti-conspiracy theory favors intuition, what feels right, what seems right, experience, memory-in short, what contradicts or can't be explained by science.

In such paranormal narratives, there is usually a believer and a skeptic, and the tension of the narrative is introduced in the debate between them. We want to be there to witness its resolution, that is, the manifestation of the truth of paranormal powers. The believer has usually seen evidence of paranormal powers with his or her own eyes, but either can't get his or her hands on hard, physical evidence, or the evidence keeps being stolen or destroyed by others, usually the conspirators. In contrast, the skeptic has faith in traditional science, trusts hard evidence, and thus debunks the paranormal point of view. One fascinating feature of The X-Files is that week after week, Agent Scully, a physician, an extremely intelligent woman, never quite comes to accept Mulder’s paranormal and conspiracy beliefs.

Most commonly, the believer is a powerless, marginal person and often a woman; the skeptic is almost always a man (Hess 1993). In The X-Files these sex roles are reversed because the screenwriter and creator, Chris Carter, explicitly stated that he wanted to “flip” traditional sex stereotypes and make Mulder the believer and Scully the skeptic.

So, the populist, paranormalist, and conspiracy elements in The X-Files are expressed by: first, an anti-scientific viewpoint, that is, the view that traditional, established science is wrong, the laws of physics can be overturned, and the intuition of the common man and woman is right; second, a condemnation of government secrecy-it is opposed to the fact that the powers that be are withholding valuable information from the public and are harming us; and third, the hero, the outsider, the paranormal believer, discovers evidence that contradicts the official, dominant view, and attempts to unmask the conspiracy and empower the powerless, the common man and woman, by giving us this valuable information.

Of course, in The X-Files, the conspiracy couldn't really be unmasked and the treachery couldn't be defeated because it was an ongoing series and hence the same evil forces had to continue to do their machinations in episode after episode. There was no triumph, no resolution. The only triumph was the reality of the evidence that Mulder and Scully gathered. But, again, because the conspirators were so powerful and commanded such a huge arsenal of resources, that evidence had to be destroyed or taken away; hence, the triumph of getting their hands on the evidence was negated. The only true victory in The X-Files was the viewers’ knowledge of what really happened.

As a result, the triumph of the paranormal and conspiratorial views in The X-Files was only an intellectual and cognitive victory-not a political one. At the end of each show, the evil remained; only our view of the world changed. We know the truth, but the evil in our midst, it seems, will always abide.

References

Fenster, Mark. 1999. Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hess, David J. 1993. Science in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers, and American Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

]]>Ica Stones: Yabba-Dabba-Do!Sun, 01 Sep 2002 16:22:00 EDTinfo@csicop.org ()http://www.csicop.org/si/show/ica_stones_yabba-dabba-do
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/ica_stones_yabba-dabba-doWe all know that humans and dinosaurs actually coexisted, even if that only happened in Hanna-Barbera’s The Flintstones cartoons and in some popular sci-fi movies. But what about reality? Was there ever a time when a triceratops snorted at some bearded man crossing its path? Or when some desperate girl ran away screaming with a hungry T. Rex on her heels?

All scientific evidence so far tells us that this has never been the case. Modern man first appeared on Earth a few million years after the last dinosaur thought something like: “Hey, where’s everybody?”

This fact alone should rest the case once and for all, one thinks, but as it usually happens, things on this strange world of ours are never that simple. As we have recently seen (Polidoro 2002), until a few years ago there were some people who were sure that a pterodactyl had survived up until the Civil War era only to be shot down by some overweight Union soldier. There was even a photograph that someone apparently snapped in the 1860s to commemorate the event. As we now know, the whole thing turned out to be just a hoax, courtesy of the creators of The Blair Witch Project.

Such revelations obviously never stop those seeking evidence of something they intuitively know to be true: dinosaurs and men shared the same land and sometimes the same stomach.

Is there, then, any better evidence for this idea than fake pictures and intuition? Well, would you consider good evidence the existence of, let’s see, some ancient drawings depicting dinosaurs done by man at the dawn of time? Of course, you would, right? Good, now brace yourself because such drawings exist!

Welcome the Rolling Stones

In 1994 scientists were stunned by the accidental discovery of some spectacular prehistoric paintings of horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, and mammoths on the walls of a cave at Ardeche Valley, south-eastern France, considered to be the world’s oldest paintings (between 29,700 and 32,400 years old) (Chauvet 1996). Are there, anywhere in the world, similar paintings depicting dinosaurs?

Yes there are, according to some, but they are not drawn with charcoal on some obscure grotto, instead they are carved on thousands of rocks of various shapes and dimensions, apparently hand-etched some 65 to 230 million years ago. And what do these etchings show? You guessed it: brontosaurs, triceratops, stegosaurs, and the whole dino collection of beasts!

That alone would have made the most sensational discovery ever, not only able to eclipse the beauty of the Chauvet paintings, but also most everything else discovered so far.

But wait, there’s more! Some other stones, in fact, depict pictures of primitive men hunting and killing dinosaurs and other men flying on the back of pterodactyls. What tops them all, however, are some precisely detailed drawings of ancient men watching the heavens through what look like telescopes and others piloting flying machines or performing open-heart surgery, cesarean section births, and brain transplants!

Are we then in the presence of the astounding proof that not only dinosaurs lived until “recent” times but also that ancient men were far more advanced than we ever thought possible? Just give me a few more minutes before jumping to conclusions, will you?

Let’s Rock!

The story begins in 1966, in Ica, a small town on the south coast of Peru, when a Peruvian physician, Dr. Javier Cabrera Darquea, received a small carved rock as a gift for his birthday. The carving looked ancient but when Dr. Cabrera saw it the first thing he thought was that it was a drawing of an extinct fish.

From that moment on, hearing of the extreme interest that the good doctor showed for that rock, local natives approached him with the fantastic news that if he wanted more stones they had a few and could sell them to him. He wanted them and he got them. Actually, he got so many of them (about 15,000) that he allegedly abandoned his career in medicine in Lima to open up the Museo de Piedras Grabadas (Engraved Stones Museum) in Ica where he housed his collection.

News of the opening of such a museum were greeted with hurrahs by at least three groups of people, as Robert Todd Carroll points out in his Skeptic’s Dictionary (Carroll 2002): “a) those who believe that extraterrestrials are an intimate part of Earth’s 'real' history; b) fundamentalist creationists who drool at the thought of any possible error made by anthropologists, archaeologists, evolutionary biologists, etc.; and c) the mytho-historians who claim that ancient myths are accurate historical records to be understood literally.”

Please, allow this poor European to dispense with the creationists’ pretenses, considered on this side of the ocean to be totally absurd not only by any sensible people hearing them but also by many Catholics, the Pope included.

The question, however, remains: since man first appeared on Earth about 2 million years ago, while dinosaurs were already extinct approximately 60 million years earlier, how could these stones be authentic?

Stoned

Now, there are many things in this story that ring more than one alarm bell: 1) since when does one need to get specialized knowledge in extinct fish to become a medical doctor?; 2) exactly what kind of extinct fish is depicted on that famous first stone and when did it become extinct?; 3) How is it that if there once was such an evolved civilization able to build telescopes and flying machines, and perform microsurgery, the best they could do to preserve the memory of their existence was to carve crude drawings on some stones?; 4) If such a civilization really existed, why is it that nowhere else in the world can traces of their existence be found?; 5) And finally, why is it that no dinosaur’s fossils can be dated to an age contemporary with man?

Please, spare me answers like: “There are no traces of that civilization simply because they left the planet (taking everything with them, except the stones) to colonize another solar system!"; or: “It’s all just a test of your faith from the Lord, brother"; or even: “It’s a coverup! That’s it, I said it! Ah-ah, and you are in it! Along with those hidden powers that planned Kennedy’s assassination and Elvis Presley’s death-simulation and . . .” Thank you, thank you, I've got the picture: don't call us, we'll call you.

We are trying here to examine the facts from a scientific point of view and would like to get scientific (or, at worst, scientific “sounding”) answers.

The matter could be easily solved by dating the stones. Have they been dated yet? Nope, sorry. Carbon dating can only be done on artifacts that contain organic material, and the stones do not. The only way to date them would be to examine the strata in which they were found.

Okay, then: what about that strata? Well, there’s another little problem here: no one knows exactly were the stones come from. Some say they were found by locals on the bed of a river, others in an unidentified cave.

As compensation for these shortcomings, however, one could read a very revealing interview with a Basilio Uchuya and his wife, Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana, two peasants from Callango, published some years ago by Mundial magazine (Anonymous 1975). In it, Basilio and Irma admit that all of the stones they sold to Cabrera they had carved themselves. As for the subjects to be depicted on the stones it was easy: they chose illustrations from comic books, school books, and magazines.

Cabrera objected that andesite is too hard to carve well by mere mortals using stone tools. “True,” says Carroll in his entry on the Ica stones, “but the stones are not carved. They are graved, i.e., a surface layer of oxidation has been scratched away. Cabrera assumes that the creators of the stones only had stone tools available to them. The Inca, Maya, and Aztec cultures all (already) had advanced metallurgy by the time the Spanish arrived. Cabrera and the Ica locals certainly have more than stone tools available to them.” That yellowish, ancient layer that covered the stones was as easily obtained, said Basilio: once the etching was done, the stones were placed in a poultry pen and chickens did the rest. Finally, a recent examination of the stones, done in Barcellona by José Antonio Lamich, founder of the Spanish “Hipergea” research group, revealed signs of sandpaper and recent carvings, thus fueling the hoax hypothesis. When questioned why they did it, the hoaxers answered that etching stones was easier than tilling the soil.

Great! What time is it, now? Oops, that late! Maybe I can make it for a late night showing of Attack of the Clones: it’s still science fiction, agreed, but at least in the movie they have better special effects.

]]>Circular Reasoning: The ‘Mystery’ of Crop Circles and Their ‘Orbs’ of LightSun, 01 Sep 2002 16:22:00 EDTinfo@csicop.org ()http://www.csicop.org/si/show/circular_reasoning_the_mystery_of_crop_circles_and_their_orbs_of_light
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/circular_reasoning_the_mystery_of_crop_circles_and_their_orbs_of_lightSince they began to capture media attention in the mid 1970s, and to proliferate and evolve through the decades of the 1980s and 1990s, crop circles have provided mystery and controversy. New books, touting “scientific research,” continue the trend. The topic is also getting a boost from a new Hollywood movie, Signs, starring Mel Gibson as a Pennsylvania farmer who discovers a 500-foot design imprinted in his crops and seeks to learn its meaning.

At issue are swirled, often circular designs pressed into crop fields, especially those of southern England. They can range from small circles only a few feet in diameter to elaborate “pictograms,” some now as large as a few hundred feet across. By the end of the 1980s books on the crop circle phenomenon had begun to spring up as well, and soon circles-mystery enthusiasts were being dubbed cereologists (after Ceres, the Roman goddess of vegetation). Circlemania was in full bloom (Delgado and Andrews 1989; Nickell and Fischer 1992; Schnabel 1994).

Most cereologists-a.k.a. “croppies” (Hoggart and Hutchinson 1995)-believed the circular designs were being produced either by extraterrestrials or by hypothesized “plasma vortices,” supposedly “small, local whirlwinds of ionized air” (Haselhoff 2001, 5-6). A few took a more mystical approach. When I visited the vast wheat crops of the picturesque Wiltshire countryside in 1994, at one formation a local dowser told me he believed the swirled patterns were produced by spirits of the earth (Nickell 1995).

Hoaxers, most croppies insisted, could not be responsible because the plants were only bent and not broken, and there were no footprints or other traces of human activity. Skeptics replied that from mid-May to early August the English wheat was green and pliable, and could only be broken with difficulty. As to the absence of tracks, they were precluded by de facto footpaths in the form of the tractor “tramlines” that mark the fields in closely spaced, parallel rows (Nickell and Fischer 1992).

Investigation into the circles mystery indicated that it might be profitable to look not just at individual formations but at the overall phenomenon (rather on the old principle that one may fail to see the forest for the trees). Forensic analyst John F. Fischer and I soon identified several characteristics that suggested the work of hoaxers (Nickell and Fischer 1992):

An Escalation in Frequency. Although there were sporadic reports of simple circles in earlier times and in various countries (possibly as UFO-landing-spot hoaxes), the classic crop circles began to be reported by the mid 1970s. Data on the circles showed that their number increased annually from 1981-1987, an escalation that seemed to correlate with media coverage of the phenomenon. In fact it appeared that the coverage helped prompt further hoaxes.

Geographic Distribution. The phenomenon showed a decided predilection for a limited geographic area, flourishing in southern England-in Hampshire, Wiltshire, and nearby counties. It was there that the circles effect captured the world’s attention. And, just as the number of circles increased, so their locations spread. After newspaper and television reports on the phenomenon began to increase in the latter 1980s, the formations began to crop up (so to speak) in significant numbers around the world. Indeed the circles effect appeared to be a media-borne “virus.”

Increase in Complexity. A very important characteristic of the patterned-crops phenomenon was the tendency of the configurations to become increasingly elaborate over time. They progressed from simple swirled circles to circles with rings and satellites, to still more complex patterns. In 1987 came a crop message, “WEARENOTALONE” (although skeptics observed that, if the source were indeed English-speaking extraterrestrials, the message should have read “You” rather than “We”). In 1990 came still more complex patterns, dubbed “pictograms.” There were also free-form shapes (e.g., a “tadpole"-like design), a witty crop triangle, and the hilarious bicycle (see Hoggart and Hutchinson 1995, 59).

There also appeared beautifully interlinked spirals, a Menorah, intricate “snowflake” and stylized “spider web” designs, elaborate “Torus Knot” and “Mandala” emblems, pentagram and floral patterns, and other distinctive formations, including an “Origami Hexagram” and several fractals (mathematical designs with a motif subjected to repeated subdivision)-all consistent with the intelligence of modern homo sapiens. At the end of the decade came many designs that included decidedly square and rectilinear shapes, seeming to represent a wry response to the hypothesized swirling “vortex” mechanism.

The Shyness Factor. A fourth characteristic of the cropfield phenomenon is its avoidance of being observed in action. It is largely nocturnal, and the designs even appear to specifically resist being seen, as shown by Operation White Crow. That was an eight-night vigil maintained by about sixty cereologists in June 1989. Not only did no circles appear in the field chosen for surveillance but-although there had already been almost a hundred formations that summer, with yet another 170 or so to occur-not a single circle was reported during the period anywhere in England. Then a large circle-and-ring formation was discovered about 500 yards away on the very next day!

These and other characteristics are entirely consistent with the work of hoaxers. Indeed, as John Fischer and I were about to go to press with our investigative report, in September 1991 two “jovial con men in their sixties” confessed they had been responsible for many of the crop formations made over the years. In support of their claim the men, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, fooled cereologist Pat Delgado. He declared a pattern they had produced for a tabloid to be authentic, insisting it was of a type no hoaxer could have made. The pair utilized a rope-and-plank device to flatten the plants, demonstrating their technique for television crews, e.g., on ABC-TV’s Good Morning America on September 10, 1991 (Nickell and Fischer 1992, 145-148).

Cereologists were forced to concede that hoaxers were producing elaborate designs and that “there are many ways to make a hoaxed crop circle” (Haselhoff 2001, 34). (For example, some who go 'round in circles use a garden roller to flatten the plants [Hoggart and Hutchinson 1995].) While in the past some cereologists thought they could distinguish “real” from fake circles by dowsing (Nickell 1995), the more cautious now admit it is not an easy matter, “certainly not as long as we do not even know exactly what mechanism creates crop circles” (Haselhoff 2001, 34).

Nevertheless the croppies were sure that some of the formations must be genuine, citing various “unexplained” features. More recently they invoked new “scientific” evidence in that regard, such as that provided by “the BLT Research Team” in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The “B” and “T” are circle “researchers” and “L” is a semi-retired biophysicist, W.C. Levengood. He finds a correlation between certain deformities in plants and their locations within crop-circle-type formations, but not control plants outside them (Levengood and Talbott 1999). However, correlation is not causation, and there are other objections to his work (Nickell 1996a). As well, more mundane hypotheses for the effects-for instance, compressed moist plants steaming in the hot sun-appear to have been insufficiently considered.

Crucially, since there is no satisfactory evidence that a single “genuine” (i.e., “vortex"-produced) crop circle exists, Levengood’s reasoning is circular: although there are no guaranteed genuine formations on which to conduct research, the research supposedly proves the genuineness of the formations. But if the work were really valid, Levengood would be expected to find that a high percentage of the crop circles chosen for research were actually hoaxed, especially since even many ardent cereologists admit there are more hoaxed than “genuine” ones (Nickell 1996a; Nickell and Fischer 1992). For example, prominent cereologist Colin Andrews (2001) has conceded that 80 percent of the British crop circles are manmade; yet Levengood claims his research “suggests that over 95 percent of worldwide crop formations involve organized ion plasma vortices . . .” (Levengood and Talbott 1999).

Levengood and others who postulate crop-stamping, ion plasma vortices have to face the fact that those remain unrecognized by science. They owe their imagined existence to George Terence Meaden, a former professor of physics who took up meteorology as an avocation. His book The Circles Effect and Its Mysteries (1989) is still revered by many cereologists. Alas, however, he merely attempted to “explain” a mystery by creating another, and-humiliated by hoaxers-eventually retired from the scene, conceding that all of the complex designs were fakes (Hoggart and Hutchinson 1995, 59).

Nevertheless, many circles aficionados have begun to photograph supposed vortex effects which, curiously, resemble some of the same photographic anomalies that are the stock-in-trade of ghost hunters. For example, in her Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles, credulous journalist Linda Moulton Howe (2000, 137, 255) exhibits a flash photo taken in a crop circle that shows a bright “mysterious arch with internal structure that seems to spiral like a plasma.” Unfortunately for Howe (erstwhile promoter of cattle mutilations and similar “mysteries”), the effect is indistinguishable from that caused by the camera’s unsecured wrist strap reflecting the flash (Nickell 1996b). As corroborative evidence of this mundane cause, the bright strand-like shapes typically go unseen by the ghosthunter or cereologist, only appearing in their snapshots.

Again, Howe (2000, 169-176) shows several photos containing “transparent spheres” that the croppies call “energy balls,” “light orbs,” “atmospheric plasmas,” etc. They are indistinguishable from “orbs” of “spirit energy” typically seen in photographs of graveyards and other “haunted” places and that sometimes appear in snapshots as UFOs. Skeptics have demonstrated that these globelike effects can be produced by particles of dust, water droplets, and the like reflecting the flash (Mosbleck 1988; Nickell 1994; Burton 1999). Other simulators of paranormal “energy” in photos include lens flares (the result of interreflection between lens surfaces), bugs and debris reflecting the flash, and many other causes, including film defects and hoaxes (Nickell 1994).

Sometimes, however, “hovering balls of light” and other “energy” effects are reported by eyewitnesses, though not only in the vicinity of crop circles (Haselhoff 2001; Howe 2000). These too may have a variety of causes including pranksters’ parachute flares ("Flares” 1999), various misperceived aerial craft and other phenomena (such as ball lightning), false claims, hallucinations, etc. In some instances, small lights observed moving about cropfields at night might have come from the flashlights of the circle makers!

It appears that for the foreseeable future the crop-circle phenomenon will continue. At least it has moved from the level of mere hoaxing-"a form of graffiti on the blank wall of southern England” (Johnson 1991)-to represent an impressive genre of outdoor art. The often breathtaking designs (best seen in aerial photographs, like the giant Nazca drawings in Perú) are appreciated not only by the mystery mongers but by skeptics as well. Indeed as reliably reported (Hoggart and Hutchinson 1995), skeptics have helped to make many of them!

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to CFI staff-especially Tim Binga, Kevin Christopher, Benjamin Radford, and Ranjit Sandhu-for helping in various ways to make this report possible.

Nearly 500 people attended CSICOP’s Fourth World Skeptics Conference June 20-23 in Burbank, California, hearing a first-ever opening session on confidence games and financial scams, a fascinating semi-debate-format session on evolution and intelligent design (featuring, among others, evolutionary biologist Kenneth Miller and ID proponent William Dembski), another plenary session on urban legends, and a variety of paired concurrent sessions challenging attendees to make difficult choices about what not to miss.

It seemed impossible not to miss something interesting, however. The concurrent sessions focused on fringe psychotherapies, space-age pseudoscience, medical claims, “The Investigators” (Richard Wiseman, Joe Nickell, Jan Willem Nienhuys), educating our future (moderated by Young Skeptics Program director Amanda Chesworth and featuring, among others, Diane Swanson, author of Nibbling on Einstein’s Brain, a book about science and skepticism for young people; and Charles Wynn, co-author of Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction, a book for the general public about pseudoscience) and the paranormal around the world (with speakers from China, India, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, and Germany).

Toss in a raucous luncheon address by the irrepressible science fiction writer Harlan Ellison (recipient at the awards banquet the next night of CSICOP’s Distinguished Skeptic Award), that ranged widely over politics, religion, and skepticism, an evening keynote address by MIT cognitive scientist and artificial intelligence guru Marvin Minsky, and a side-splitting Saturday night awards-banquet stand-up comedy routine by television actor Gabe Kaplan, and all the ingredients were there for an entertaining and mind-expanding three-day intellectual and skeptical feast.

The conference appeared to match up well with its predecessor world skeptics congresses in Amherst, New York (1996), Heidelberg, Germany (1998), and Sydney, Australia (2000).

Due to solid efforts by CSICOP’s public relations crew, the news media were well represented, with reporters from BBC Radio, Fox News, the Learning Channel, KABC, the Burbank Leader, and Australian Broadcasting Corporation showing up, as well as The New Yorker. A correspondent from the Latin American media giant Telemundo was also on hand, interviewing several attendees and speakers for a Spanish-speaking audience.

This one’s overall theme, “Prospects for Skepticism: The Next 25 Years,” seemed appropriate since CSICOP had just completed a yearlong celebration of its twenty-fifth anniversary. This first-ever West Coast-sited world conference, at the Hilton, Burbank Airport and Convention Center, was hosted by the Center for Inquiry-West, CFI’s recently established Southern California outpost for skeptics and humanists, situated a few miles to the south in Hollywood. CFI-West just late last year dedicated the first floor of its new building on Hollywood Boulevard, central to the world’s entertainment media, which communicate and miscommunicate so much, good and bad, to global audiences via television and film.

CSICOP founder and chairman Paul Kurtz opened the conference by pointing out that the modern media, with their insatiable interest in “entertainment and titillation,” are at the root of the phenomena of interest in the paranormal. In contrast, he noted, CSICOP has pressed for alternative scientific and rational investigation of claims, and “for balanced presentations, not only the pro but the con.” Throughout, he said, the broader goal is “public appreciation of the scientific outlook.”

“It is the science and the scientific outlook that is truly breathtaking,” he said. “You don't need fantasy and fiction to feed the human imagination.”

He also noted-as would happen several more times in the conference-the recent death of CSICOP Fellow Stephen Jay Gould, and the losses in previous years of scientist/skeptics Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov. “Where are the new heroes to emerge today, to integrate science and to explicate and defend science?”

“We've been doing this for twenty-five years,” Kurtz said. “This conference is on the next twenty-five years.”

Following are brief summaries of several of the key sessions.

Don't Get Taken!

The opening Thursday evening session, “Don't Get Taken,” focused on a mostly new subject for CSICOP, confidence games and financial scams. All end up taking innocent people’s money, in ways that may seem clever or may seem crude, but nevertheless prey on people’s trust.

CSICOP Fellow Robert Steiner, a certified public accountant, professional magician, and author of the book Don't Get Taken!, listed several myths about con games:

The myth that cons are very nice and gentle. Not true.

You cannot cheat an honest man. “Yes, you can,” Steiner countered.

Conmen: “Actually some of the greatest con sharks are women.”

Only stupid and naïve people get taken. Wrong!

Only the greedy get taken. Wrong again!

Most scams have been around in various forms for generations, but some are new. New in just the last few weeks, Steiner said, was one involving an offer to have your name taken off telephone-solicitation lists-something appealing to most everyone. The only request: Give us your social security number!

Richard Lead, an accountant and international taxation specialist (and treasurer of the Australian Skeptics), who writes a regular column on financial scams for the Australian Skeptic, expressed outrage at scammers. “How dare they take other people’s money!” he said. Scams are bad for two reasons, he said: “Good people lose money. Bad people make money.”

The reasons people fall for scams are far more complex than greed. He said they are analogous to optical illusions. In both, “the mind is fooled.” He described a wide variety of pyramid schemes, the secret to which is hiding the pyramid with a product. The product may be something people want or it may be essentially worthless, but it disguises the real intent of the pyramid, to make money for the few people at the top, at the expense of all the rest.

Virtually everyone is familiar with the notorious Nigerian letter. ("How many have not received one?” Lead asked the audience. Only one hand went up.) Nevertheless the Nigerian letter scam, which seeks the recipient’s help in getting large sums of money out of Nigeria under various ruses, continues to draw people in and take their money, or worse. “A friend lost $90,000 to the Nigerian letter,” Lead said. “He thought all the others were hoaxes, but that his was real!” The Nigerian letter is so successful, Lead said, that $200 million U.S. are flowing into Nigeria each year as a result. And when people whose money has been scammed from them get so upset that they travel to Nigeria to try to find a way to get it back, they can be in mortal jeopardy. “Twenty people are murdered each year who go there,” Lead said.

A similar scam is the selling of nonexistent credit cards for a Caribbean tax haven that promises a $4,000 credit. The only thing one has to do to get this wonderful bargain is to send $150 to the tax haven. That’s the last they see of their money-or of the credit.

The “Wall Street tease” was the topic of Richard Schroeder, a certified financial planner and registered investment advisor. “I can't think of anything more paranormal than modern Wall Street,” said Schroeder. “Most of what Wall Street tells us is baloney and does not work.”

Enron, Arthur Anderson, and dot-com IPOs are not the worst Wall Street has to offer, Schroeder said. For decades, he said, Wall Street has lived with a nasty secret: Modern financial markets are efficient and it is next to impossible to beat them. And yet people, shelling out commissions of 0.5 percent to 1 percent, pay $35 billion to $70 billion a year “to handle your investments,” with the hope of getting an edge, that their expert will be a winner.

Schroeder said fifty years of well-validated academic research show that security investments follow a “random walk"-meaning no useful information is embedded in the historical price information of securities. Schroeder described the research, published in many journals and in the 1973 book A Random Walk Down Wall Street.

As for typical advice such as “buy 'undervalued' stock,” Schroeder says, “It doesn't work. There are so many brilliant people and so much information so readily available, it is impossible for anyone to gain an advantage.” And, he said, the stock market is efficient-it processes all information immediately, so no one has access to information that others can't get.

“Scores of empirical studies for fifty years show . . . no basis for the value of investment management,” said Schroeder. “Yet financial management interests continue to charge billions of dollars a year.”

Moderator Ray Hyman concluded the session with some remarks on scammers and the psychology of deception. Con games work within a social situation and depend upon the normal workings of social dynamics, he said. They “are a play within a play.” “We are social creatures. We've evolved to react to social cues.” Furthermore, he said “no one wants to admit that they were taken.”

“All these deceptions depend on social trust,” Hyman said. “It is because people trust other people that society functions as well as it does-and also why cons work.”

Evolution and Intelligent Design

One of the highlights of the conference was the Friday morning plenary session pitting two prominent defenders of evolution, Kenneth Miller and Wesley Elsberry, against two leading proponents of “intelligent design” (ID), William Dembski and Paul Nelson. ID is of course the latest tactical approach of those who seek to dethrone evolution in the schools and contend that intelligent design is a scientific theory, or at least a philosophical theory, that should get some kind of equal billing.

Moderator Massimo Pigliucci, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Tennessee (and author of the just-published book Denying Evolution), worked out in advance with the participants a format in which all speakers first made short presentations, followed by a segment in which the participants questioned, and responded to, each other. It made for a lively and interactive session.

Pigliucci began with a historical overview tracing the first critique of intelligent design theory back to Hume in 1779. As for the evolutionary biology, he emphasized that “natural selection is a satisfying, not an optimizing, process.” It is not “survival of the fittest,” he said, but “survival of the barely tolerable.” Perfection is not required.

He outlined the neo-Darwinian synthesis that draws on insights from modern genetics (mutations and recombinations) and modern paleontology, which has identified several human ancestors. In the modern frontiers of evolutionary science genes and the environment interact and real organisms are seen as a complex outcome of many forces (there is no “beanbag” genetics, he said). There is also much recent research interest in the evolution of development.

He then described modern ID theory (and its leading proponents Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, and Dembski), various scientific and philosophical responses to ID, and concluded with a list of questions for ID:

Is ID a scientific research program? If so, what testable predictions does it make?

Is ID a philosophical theory? If so, is it likely to make a valuable contribution to science?

Should we teach ID in schools, and if so, in science classes, or elsewhere?

Biologist Wesley Elsberry led off the panelists’ presentations with an examination of the “wedge” tactic of the ID movement that, as he says, seeks nothing less than a redefinition of science itself. Appropriate for the conference theme, he began with a “25-year view,” first asking why, when there are so many real problems facing society, should we be concerned at all about ID?

The answer, he said, is because it aims to affect science education and because its most high-profile advocates are creationists.

He spoke of ID’s anti-evolution, antiscience agenda (with its theistic alternative), its social-political wedging tactic, its primarily religious motivation, and its primary institution, the Discovery Institute, with which both of the ID speakers on the panel are affiliated.

He said ID’s notorious “wedge” document surfaced in 1999, outlining goals of the Discovery Institute for the next five, ten, and twenty years. The goals included: Attack the definition of science, defeat scientific materialism, and seek to influence education and politics.

The original intention was to carry out research first, but Elsberry said ID advocates started their political agenda before doing the research program. He outlined a variety of ID political activities, including ID-promoting bills in Kansas and Georgia, the Santorum amendment in Congress (which contrary to ID propaganda did not become law), and the 2002 effort with the Ohio Board of Education.

He said when ID proponents are asked what their scientific program has been or what it has accomplished, they can give no satisfactory answer but contend that the reason is they “need more funding.” He finds that response “ironic” given the enormous financial support funneling into the ID movement.

“The ID approach is to bypass skeptical scientists and go directly to the public,” he said. “Political activism is the primary focus.” ID “science” is “on the backburner,” he said, “and the pilot light is out.”

Paul Nelson, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and editor of the ID journal Origins & Design, then spoke on “why this debate will not go away in American culture.” He asked why ID should be disqualified a priori. He disagrees with “the rule of methodological materialism,” in which the statements of science must invoke only natural things and processes.

“Why not be curious?” he asked. “What if the world were designed? Naturalism might be false. Why not suspend naturalism as an a priori hypothesis and let the evidence decide? The dilemma the scientific community faces is not being open to all possibilities. Naturalism might not be true.”

Then it was the turn of Kenneth Miller, whose presentation was titled “Unmasking ID.” Miller is a professor of biology at Brown University and author of Finding Darwin’s God. He has been one of the most outspoken and effective defenders of the scientific integrity of evolutionary biology.

William Dembski’s calculations “essentially assume what they are trying to prove,” Miller said. In contrast, Darwin’s ideas made testable predictions. “His predictions have been fulfilled overwhelmingly by subsequent developments.”

“It is disingenuous to speak of design without speaking of creationism,” he said. “Design theory is creation(ism).”

ID'ers still say everything is the result of design, said Miller, adding, “A theory that can explain anything in reality explains nothing.”

He incisively critiqued various ID contentions about biology, including its claims that the bacterial flagellum or the blood-clotting cascade could not have progressively evolved. ID makes the same claim that the Krebs cycle (the cyclic series of chemical changes that result in carbohydrate metabolism and produce energy for living organisms) could not have evolved. “But there is a literature of how it did evolve,” Miller countered. And, he said, the individual parts do have function.

“Dembski’s calculations require an assertion we already know is false,” said Miller. “The 'evidence' for ID requires a priori assumptions that an evolutionary pathway to a structure is impossible.

“Intelligent design creationism is nothing more than old-fashioned creationism dressed up in new arguments of information theory and molecular biology,” Miller said.

He ended by countering the ID contention that science is closed-minded to the novel. “Science is not hostile to new ideas,” he said. Novel ideas lead to new research, which is then subjected to peer review and obtains scientific consensus before reaching the classroom and textbooks.

Intelligent design, said Miller, wants to bypass all that messy science “and go directly to classrooms and textbooks.” This was met with prolonged applause.

Dembski, in his presentation, did not so much make any scientific argument as assert the primacy of ID’s political and popular power over science and evolution. (Dembski, who has Ph.D.'s in both mathematics and philosophy, is author of The Design Inference, among other pro-ID books.)

“Over the next twenty-five years ID will provide the greatest challenge to skepticism,” he said. “ID is threatening to be mainstream,” he said, asserting that polls show 90 percent support. “ID is already becoming mainstream within the public themselves,” he said. “The usual skeptical retorts are not going to work against ID.” He contended that ID “turns the tables on skepticism.”

Dembski contended that Darwinism “is the ultimate status quo,” that it “squelches dissent.” Young people, who “love rebellion,” see that and are attracted to ID as a result, he claimed. “The public supports intelligent design. The public is tired of being bullied by an intellectual elite.” He contended that skeptics resort to rhetoric and “artificially define ID out of science,” allowing in only material matters.

Intelligent Design, in contrast, “paints the more appealing world picture” whereas skepticism works by being negative. “This doesn't set well with the public. . . . To most people evolution doesn't provide a compelling view.” And to scientists and skeptics who defend evolution and the scientific process Dembski ended with a sarcastic “good luck.”

The point/counterpoint segment that followed allowed pointed questioning of speakers’ positions. Some of the interactions were interesting indeed. For instance, Nelson at one point referred to a scientific paper on the evolution of the Krebs cycle. He said its authors “cannot close the cycle” unless they de novo postulate “a missing enzyme.” Without that assumption, “the evidence doesn't work.”

Miller asked for a few minutes. He explained he had the paper in question in his laptop computer and would like to find the specific passage. He found the paper, displayed it on the ballroom screen in full pdf format, and went right to the passage, showing where Nelson had misinterpreted its meaning.

Said Miller, in returning to the general point: “In the evolution of metabolism, the achievement of the fundamental steps of the Krebs cycle was not difficult at all. Almost all of its structure primarily existed for very different purposes, and cells had to add just one enzyme . . . to convert a collection of different pathways into the central cyclic pathway of metabolism.”

At another point the two ID proponents were asked if they believed in the great age of the earth. Nelson answered that the earth’s age didn't matter to him. Dembski said, “ID is not dependent upon any particular view of the age of the earth. It is not relevant.”

Miller then returned to the question: “Paul, how old do you think the earth is?”

Nelson (after a pause): “It’s well known I have a young-earth position.”

Miller: “That is not so hard, was it?”

Nelson: “I still think it’s irrelevant.” He said skeptics ask the earth-age question “because they get rhetorical mileage out of it.”

To Nelson’s credit, he, in contrast with Dembski, was generally amiable in his interactions with the skeptics. He contended at the beginning that he himself was a skeptic and he liked the questioning attitude of skeptics when he reads the Skeptical Inquirer.

Nelson also consented to appear in an impromptu informal late afternoon question-and-answer session the next day in a room off the conference hotel lobby for a continuation of the back-and-forth discussions with Elsberry and Pigliucci (Miller had left), again moderated by Pigliucci. Eventually the small room filled up with seventy-five or eighty conference attendees, most all seemingly vociferous skeptics, with Nelson, the lone ID proponent among them, genially maintaining that science should be open to the possibility that naturalism just might not have all the answers and that science should be open to other hypotheses (design). Nelson, who has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in philosophy, generally spoke from a philosophical not a scientific viewpoint, in maintaining that design, not evolution, just might have played a role in shaping the world. At one point, an audience member praised him for his courage in coming into the wolf’s den to take part in the informal session. He indicated he enjoyed the interplay. The audience, although clearly unconvinced by his arguments, appeared to as well.

-K.F.

Fringe Psychotherapies

Fringe psychotherapies was the topic of one session moderated by Scott Lilienfeld of Emory University. Lilienfeld spoke about the proliferation of fringe psychotherapies, and claimed that there are over 500 such untested techniques currently in use. Far from being a case of a few bad apples, Lilienfeld said that surveys suggest that the majority of practitioners do not use empirically supported methods with their patients.

Dr. Gina Green gave an overview of the pseudosciences surrounding autism, a disease that usually strikes the young and leaves them mute, with impaired mental and motor skills. Because the cause(s) of autism are still unclear, there is a lot of mystery and magical thinking associated with the disease. The unproven, discredited beliefs and techniques include Facilitated Communication, the hormone secretin, and the belief that vaccines somehow cause the condition. Green said that the problem isn't as bad as it used to be, due in part to skeptical exposés, greater public awareness, and recent court decisions.

Steven Jay Lynn, of the State University of New York, discussed recovered memories and pointed out that “even under the best of circumstances memory is fallible.” Though the heyday of recovered memories has passed, many therapists still use recovered memories and believe them to be an important part of treatment. Carol Tavris also gave a talk, discussing the pathologizing of everyday problems and the danger to patients of unregulated therapists. New, unproven (and frequently outlandish) therapies pop up with alarming regularity, threatening patients unaware of the shaky foundations of such treatments. Those needing help, she said, need to be wary of people who read about (or take a seminar on) some new, unproven technique and anoint themselves therapists.

During the question and answer session, one woman complained that most of the topics covered were old news, and that the panelists were “beating a dead horse.” Lilienfeld noted that though some treatments have been discredited, other unproven therapies are unfortunately alive and well: “The horse is not dead yet.”

Urban Legends

The session on urban legends featured author and folklorist Jan Brunvand, Barbara and David Mikkelson (co-creators of the urban legends Web site snopes.com), and Tim Tangherlini of the University of California at Los Angeles.

Brunvand discussed the popularization of urban legends and surveyed the different ways in which they have been commercialized, from teen slasher movies to advertisements. Urban legends have turned from a folklore topic to marketed, prepackaged entertainment.

The Mikkelsons focused on the rumors and urban legends surrounding the September 11, 2001, attacks. Such stories included the tale about a Bible that miraculously remained unburned in the fiery Pentagon attack (it was in fact a dictionary); that dead airplane passengers, still strapped in their seats, were found in apartments adjacent to the World Trade Center; and various rumors that Nostradamus had predicted the attacks.

Tim Tangherlini approached the topic from a different angle, examining the role of the mediator in reports and legends dealing with monsters, aliens, or other “outsiders.” For example, one element that both urban legends and accounts of aliens or monsters have in common is that they are almost always told not by the person who supposedly actually experienced it, but by a mediator, someone telling the audience the story.

Though not as well attended as some of the earlier sessions (partly because it was the last), the session titled “Paranormal Around the World” was an important forum for international skeptics. Speakers came from China, Germany, Holland, Australia, Peru, Russia, Argentina, Venezuela, and India to discuss the paranormal and skeptical movements in their native lands. Sami Rosenbaum, a skeptic from Venezuela, spoke of the prestige that his conference attendance would bring to the skeptics movement in his part of South America. Already, he said, interviews were being lined up for him back in the capital city of Caracas. All the speakers discussed the need for more skepticism in their countries, and most credited CSICOP as important in helping get the local groups started. Across varied skin tones and accents, the unifying message came through that critical thinking and science are important in all societies.

A few grumblings were heard, mostly about the sporadic technical difficulties and the tightly-packed schedule that allowed little time to meet with other skeptics. On the whole, however, the conference was a great success, and Los Angeles proved to be a good place for media outreach and communicating the skeptical message to the world.